Most preachers have one sermon they just say it in a million different ways.
For example, my sermon is “God’s love and grace extend farther than you can imagine - it even extends to you and me.”
Some poets have one poem. This week’s Brackish Water Psalter is another variation on my one poem - this one from the frontlines of the every day while I waited for a surprise car repair.
More and more I find myself called to pull my head out of the clouds and my thoughts out of the hypothetical so that I can live the life that I actually have; to let my head and heart be where my feet are in any given moment.
The people in front of me, more often than not my wife and kids, deserve my presence and care more than the headlines or speculative fiction that fills my mind.
In logistical news, I’ve added a section to the bottom of the BWP that will feature various items that have caught my attention.
21. There is a couple sitting behind me There is a couple sitting behind me speaking Spanish with the occasional word in English dropped here and there like a breadcrumb trail for my eavesdropping. We are sharing the dealership waiting room and the surprisingly high quality coffee as we wait for the oil change high priests to descend with our keys to be ransomed back to us once the fix has been made, the bill paid, the handshake and have a nice day. These strangers squeezed into proximity by circumstance and need could be nothing but a nuisance. A hurdle standing between me and my real life that exists just out of reach. This showroom could be a neutral blend of white tile and Christmas trees and people that don’t belong here but find themselves here nonetheless together in lugwrench limbo. Or this could be the Everything that holy books, desert preachers, dying poets, God’s own Son told us to wake up and find. It’s All right here. My ramshackle revelation is interrupted when the bilingual bride realizes she’s lost her purse. She sounds the alarm in both tongues to all who will hear, panic echoing across the pristine cars that have never touched the road, only to discover it was in her car under the care of a messianic mechanic who delivered her treasure and salved her anxious heart. And when she had found it, she called together her foxhole friends and neutral nuisance neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found what I had lost.’ Just so, the Present One said, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who wakes up to Everything that is our Real Life here and now in this car dealership waiting room afternoon.
Things that have my attention:
This will be a new addition to the BWP that features things that have captured my attention in the days and weeks between entries.
How the Poet Christian Wiman Keeps His Faith in The New Yorker | Christian Wiman is consistently one of my favorite poets. His memoir opened a space in me in which my vocations of poetry and priesthood crashed together. I am still living in the aftermath of that collision. This long read is a dive into his domestic life and his continued wrestling with faith and mortality.
Javelin by Sufjan Stevens | I am always on board for a new Sufjan album and his newest does not disappoint. Javelin is a powerful reflection on the grief of losing his longtime partner. There are themes of grief, loss, and resurrection throughout. It is an interesting partner to Carrie and Lowell, written in the aftermath of the death of his mother.